Sept. 7, 1995. A spray painted sign at Ipperwash Provincial Park reflects Natives' anger about the 1995 confrontation that left protester Anthony O'Brien (Dudley) George dead. (The Globe and Mail)
Interactives
Internet Links
- Ipperwash inquiry homepage
- Audio Slideshow: Ipperwash remembered
- Backgrounder: A new approach to Ipperwash
Twelve years after it was left silent and shuttered by a native protester's death, Ipperwash Provincial Park is set to return to aboriginal hands, the Ontario government announced yesterday.
The 44-hectare site on the shores of Lake Huron will be co-managed by the province and Kettle and Stony Point First Nation, with input from the surrounding non-aboriginal community, until the handover goes ahead, Aboriginal Affairs Minister Michael Bryant said.
In the meantime, the use and management of the land, where Dudley George was shot dead by police in 1995, will be worked out by negotiators from these groups, Mr. Bryant said.
"How long is it going to take? Exactly what form will the co-managed lands look like? That's what everybody's going to get together and negotiate," the minister said, as Mr. George's brother, Sam, and Chief Tom Bressette of the Kettle and Stony Point band looked on. Both were pleased with the announcement, despite the lack of details.
"We do have the commitment now; that's the No. 1 priority," Mr. George said later, after a second presentation by Mr. Bryant at the Kettle and Stony Point Reserve.
"We know that in order for this to be turned officially back over, there's going to need to be some work done, and we know that work isn't going to happen overnight," Mr. George added.
While Mr. Bryant hailed the approach as a positive way for natives and non-natives to resolve land issues, Gord Minielly, mayor of surrounding Lambton Shores, was troubled that his community was not consulted before yesterday's announcement.
"The province didn't really let us know what was happening," Mr. Minielly said, noting that Mr. Justice Sidney Linden called for better official consultation in his report from the two-year inquiry he led into Dudley George's death.
The mayor said he and Mr. Bressette had already been discussing a co-management arrangement for the park lands during the past year, and said relations between the municipality and the native band have been amicable, as both have an interest in reviving the tourism lost when the park closed down.
The Kettle and Stony Point band has already bought a golf course in the area, and Mr. Bressette has raised the prospect of a hotel and casino, Mr. Minielly said. Reopening the park as a campground or for other recreation would fit with those plans, he suggested.
"We've wanted the park opened up for the past 12 years," he said, "and if that's going to happen, there are lots of positive things we can do together."
Positive use of the park site would follow eight decades of simmering dispute since the Kettle and Stony Point band surrendered it in 1928, as part of a much larger parcel, under pressure from the federal Department of Indian Affairs.
The long strip of waterfront land was sold to a local developer, who carved off and sold an end piece to the province for $10,000, forming the park, in 1936.
The band told officials about the unmarked burial ground a year later and asked that it be protected; some remains surfaced from the sandy soil in 1950, but the province did nothing to preserve the graves.
This, along with a 50-year dispute with the federal government over its failure to return adjacent reserve land taken for use as an army camp, spurred the Sept. 4, 1995, occupation of the park by about 30 protesters. It ended two days later with a nighttime raid by the Ontario Provincial Police, during which Dudley George, unarmed, was shot dead.
A simple frame of cedar logs, festooned with ceremonial tobacco ties of various colours, still stands as a memorial where the 38-year-old fell.
Sam George said there has been talk of erecting a more substantial monument to his brother, who paid "the ultimate price" in defence of the burial ground, and thus sped along the process leading to yesterday's announcement.
As he stood at the spot last spring before Judge Linden released his report, Mr. George noticed how a sand dune had steadily grown up around it.
In native myth, the land humans inhabit grew from a speck of soil retrieved by animals from the sea bottom after the earth flooded.
"It's coming back, it's blowing in," Mr. George said. "No one will ever take that out of there now."
